Excellus awards $21M in improvement incentive payments

Excellus BlueCross BlueShield awarded a total of $21.4 million to 53 hospitals in Upstate New York hospitals including nine Rochester-area facilities as a reward for demonstrating quality improvement, Excellus officials said Wednesday.

The awards came under the health insurer’s Hospital Performance Incentive Program. Begun in 2004, the program looks at data collected by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to gauge hospitals’ improvement in patient safety, clinical outcomes, how efficiently care is delivered and how patients themselves rated their treatment.